Do I need more memory?

[mcdouglas]

Hi,

You can see my memory stats on the attached image. In the console I get high memory usage alarm, so I was thinking about adding more memory to the server.

However I'm a bit confused because if you look at the graph, the active memory is barely 5GB and I have 24GB installed in the host. On the other hand consumed memory is over the top...

Could you give me some advice?

Btw, I'm running 17 virtual machines (13 Win2008R2, 4 Linux) and a VDR.

[golddiggie]

I'd say it's time to get more RAM for the host system/server... Tell-tale numbers are the granted, consumed, balloon and swap readings... Especially with you having alarms going off (if more than once in a great while, it's now an issue)...

How tight are the memory settings for the VM's?? Did you over allocate memory there? With 13 win2k8R2 VM's/servers running, I'm not really surprised you have alarms going off...

I only have 8 VM's running on my host (24x7) with a mixture of Linux (3) Win2k3 (2), Win2k8 (1), and Win2k8R2 (2). With 16GB of RAM installed I typically see around 12GB used (summary tab in vSphere Client)...

VMware VCP4

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[idle-jam]

Alternatively you can get a trial copy of vCenter CapacityIQ.

it would be telling if if you have oversized your vm, undersized your vm, and how much memory is left or more to upgrade for your host.

iDLE-jAM | VCP 2, VCP 3 & VCP 4

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[golddiggie]

Could also download a 30 day trial of vFoglight SE or Pro (VizionCore)... I'm planning on trying out their vFoglight QuickView soon and see if it likes ESXi or not... I kind of hope it does, so I can run it in my lab... I'll probably just use a Server 2003 VM to test it with... Worst case, I'll just delete the VM and not really lose all that much time in the process...

VMware VCP4

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[J1mbo]

It's reasonably clear there is a shortage of physical RAM here. Next look at the swap in and swap out rates - as you say, the active RAM is low so it may not be a problem. If you have 4.1, check that RAM compression is enabled (in my testing, it reduces swap load significantly, presumably by acting as a kind of victim-buffer), and if you don't... then upgrade! Also if you can reduce allocated RAM this should of course help.

Another option is to swap to SSD, although with 24GB in the box I guess this is a production environment so I wouldn't suggest that since it's all a bit of an unknown. It is rumoured though that official support for this is on it's way, which would be great particularly for DR site hosts - I've found 50%+ overcommittment is easily achievable with SSD.

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

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